Transit of Venus Redux

Well, the transit of Venus came and went, and I survived. I wasn't entirely sure I would with all the stress building up to it, but here I am. I've been quite fortunate in getting four days off in a row to recuperate, and I felt rested enough by the third day to finally make myself the belated birthday cake that I've been meaning to do for two weeks now.

I also recovered enough of my creative drive to put together this collage from pictures I took with my camera through one of our 14-inch scopes. This picture was taken around 3:37 in the afternoon, and you can clearly see Venus as the round dot and a couple of sunspots as the irregular faint black spots.

Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012.

It's kind of strange to consider, but this is now a rather historic picture. I can't really say that I've ever done anything historic before. Making some assumptions about the future, it's possible that someone over a hundred years from now could find this picture while researching ancient coverage of previous transits of Venus. Kinda makes you stop and think, doesn't it?

To paraphrase a famous quote from the previous pair of transits, “And what will be the state of science in that far distant future when the December snows are falling in 2117, God only knows.”